


The Sanest Person on the Island

by aurilly



Category: Lost
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-02-06
Updated: 2009-02-06
Packaged: 2017-10-03 00:38:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aurilly/pseuds/aurilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kate runs into Sayid during "What Kate Did", just after the kiss in the woods with Jack, and while Sayid is grieving after Shannon's funeral. He helps her come to a decision.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sanest Person on the Island

The tears were streaming down her face, blinding her as she ran. Kate was running so fast that she didn't see Sayid in the jungle chopping wood until the axe had been dropped and she was completely enveloped in his arms. She could feel his entire body go rigid, as though ready to pounce on invisible attackers.

"Kate? What is wrong? Are you safe?" he whispered.

Kate nodded into his shoulder, spreading snot and tears on the shoulder strap of his shirt. She _did _feel safe, now.

"I just kissed Jack," she panted into his chest.

Sayid paused and loosened his grip somewhat, as he realized that the situation was far less dire than he had assumed. "And why should that occasion you such distress?"

Kate shook her head, trying to shake away her previous statement. That wasn't the crux of the matter at all. Why had she said that? Yet more proof that she was cracking up. "No, it isn't that. I'm going crazy, Sayid. I've got to be. There's no other explanation."

"You are not going crazy." His tone was soothing and confident and full of underserved faith in her.

"I've been seeing things. And hearing things. And Sawyer…" She stopped. She couldn't tell Sayid, not this. Not that Sawyer was Wayne. It was too insane.

Misunderstanding her half-sentence, he teased, "You kissed Sawyer, too? Now I begin to understand the problem." He didn't smile, but he almost laughed, mirthlessly. When she continued to look stricken, he finally realized that something less than life-threatening but also more serious than her love life was going on. He became deathly serious again (not that he'd ever quite stopped). "Tell me what happened."

Kate gave into his almost hypnotic influence and began babbling an incoherent stream of information. "I saw a horse I knew from before the crash… long story. In the woods. And then I was taking care of Sawyer in the hatch. Just sitting with him. Then he woke up, and he… he… He asked me why I did it, why I… He wasn't Sawyer. He was _him_."

"Who?" Despite the mask of calm he always wore, she could hear Sayid's confusion seep through.

It was a perfectly logical question, but Kate couldn't voice the answer. She broke down into tears again. Sayid managed to move them into a sitting position on the forest floor. He leaned his back against a tree, keeping her held tightly against him, with their legs tangled together on the ground.

After a minute, Sayid finally got it. "Does this have to do with why you were a prisoner?"

Kate nodded.

He pulled her face up, one hand on each side, so that he could look at her. With his thumbs, he massaged her temples in slow circles. The motion stilled not only her shaking body, but also her mind. Suddenly, she knew she wanted to tell him---only him. Sayid was the only person who had neither tried to find out what she had done nor looked at her with disapproval for her secret crimes. He was the one person she was sure wouldn't judge, wouldn't change his opinion of her, wouldn't ever bring it up again if she told him. "I killed a man. He was my father."

As the words left her lips, Kate was aware of how oddly she had worded her declaration. She watched Sayid tumble it over in his mind. His hands now slid down from her face to her shoulders, carrying the comforting warmth with them. As she had predicted, there was no judgment in his eyes.

She prepared herself for the natural follow-up question: _why_.

Such a small word, and yet so difficult. For so long, Kate had asked it of herself, had struggled to create a brief but coherent explanation that conveyed the complex reasons behind her actions. She sometimes figured out a bit of it, but in a few days it had always disappeared from her brain, and she'd had to all start over again. Each attempt came out differently, focused on different reasons. They were all shaped by her mood and her situation at any given moment. Sometimes she got scared that the reason it was so difficult for her to articulate an answer for herself meant that there wasn't really a why. Kate shivered one more time in Sayid's grasp as she tried to see how this moment would shape the story she'd tell him.

"How?" he asked.

This was not what she'd been expecting. She'd been asked why many times: by her mother, by the marshals, by Tom… but no one had ever asked her how. They'd all already known.

At any rate, this was an easier question to answer. Kate found herself quite calm and almost cold as she stated, "I put his drunk ass to bed, left the gas on, lit a match, and left the house. It blew up a couple of minutes later."

Kate had never actually said it aloud before. She felt a weight disappear, and a cloud over her head dissolve. It was as if admitting it to Sayid had helped her to admit it to herself. And even more so, she finally knew she could articulate why. But it was a question Sayid didn't seem about to ask, after all.

Strangely, he registered less surprise at her confession than he had to the original declaration. "I see," he said, but there was still no judgment in his voice as he looked at her, seeming to be almost listening to her eyes rather than her voice. Strangely enough, she had a hunch that the way she had just told him how had told him more about why than anything else she could have said.

"Please don't…" But before the request had been formulated, she realized she didn't need to ask him to keep her secret. It would almost be an insult to him to ask. Kate remembered that Sayid had a lifetime's worth of secrets that haunted him, just like her. She felt stupid for even entertaining the thought that he'd tell anyone.

She realized she was right, as Sayid tilted his head at her and gave her a look that said, _Do you honestly think I will tell?_ All he said aloud was, "Why today?"

Kate didn't understand. "What?"

He took a deep breath that was like an inhaled sigh. "Why are you experiencing such consternation about this today, more than any other day?"

"I told you. Today I saw this horse in the woods… the same horse that saved me from being caught. And then, when I was in the hatch, Sawyer started talking in his sleep. But it wasn't Sawyer. It was Wayne. He asked me why I killed him." The terrifying memory overwhelmed her and she buried herself in Sayid's chest yet again. However, she felt him shaking his head over the crown of her own.

"But why are these things happening to you _today_?" he clarified. "And why do you think Sawyer is involved? These visions must be occurring for a reason."

"Do you really think so?" she asked, pulling back to look at him. She now noted, somewhat irrelevantly, that Sayid was wearing a real shirt today. On any other day, she would have been crying into his bare shoulder. Then she remembered: the funeral. Sayid must have gotten 'dressed up' for Shannon's funeral. Which she had missed. She'd missed the funeral, and completely forgotten that he was grieving, so caught up was she in her own problems.

"I'm sorry I didn't come to the funeral," she said lamely, knowing that it wasn't sufficient. Now that she had tuned into what was going on with him, she noticed the dried salt tracks of tears on his cheeks.

Sayid held up a hand. "There is no reason to apologize. It wasn't my funeral."

Kate's kneejerk reaction was to defend herself, to tell him that she'd sent Jack in her stead, that she'd been on hatch duty. But just as she was about to say so, she realized what bullshit that was. Sawyer had been asleep, and she'd had 108 minutes, which was plenty of time to run to the beach, give her friend some support at the funeral, and get back in time to press the button. But she'd chosen not to. She'd been a coward, fled the spectre of death and fate yet again. She insisted, "I should have been there for you."

"You are here now."

"Not on purpose, though," Kate admitted. "I should have come to check on you. On purpose."

Sayid paused and looked into his lap for a second before changing the subject. "Did it make any noise?"

Kate looked at him uncomprehendingly. "What, the horse?"

"Yes, the horse." Maybe it was the accent, but Sayid sometimes managed to sound just a little bit obnoxious when he actually meant to be kind. It had taken some getting used to. Some of the others hadn't realized it yet, but Kate could tell when he was being genuinely caring and curious---usually a mix of both. There was something in his eyes that she could tell wasn't interrogatory or trying to see if she was crazy or…

"You believe me?" Kate couldn't believe it. If Sayid was the last person she'd expect to judge her, he was also the last person she'd have expected to believe her story. His way of dealing with the strange things about the island that no one understood or wanted to talk about had always seemed to be to compartmentalize them almost out of existence.

Sayid's voice was faraway and pained, as if speaking against his will. "The night before Shannon was… before she died, she told me she saw Walt, that she believed him to be alone in the jungle. I didn't believe her. I insisted it was a nightmare, just as I had the time days before when she told me she'd seen him. She spent the entirety of her last day trying to prove herself, to prove that she had really seen him. She was angry with me for not believing her. At last, I decided that, crazy as it sounded, there must be something to the tale. Otherwise she would not have persisted as assiduously as she did. Once I decided to believe her, I saw Walt, too. And since then, we've learned that Walt _is _alone, somewhere in the jungle, with people we know nothing about. Now you're telling me you saw a horse you know and that the man you killed is speaking through Sawyer. I saw Walt. What right have I to disbelieve you?"

Guilt and grief were etched all over his features. This time it was Kate who held him straight, gripping his shoulders and wanting to shake the sense back into him. She relied on that sense---they all did.

"You are _not _responsible for what happened."

He didn't respond, but deep down Kate wasn't overly worried. She knew Sayid. She knew that he'd continue to grieve, but also that he was too rational to feel personally guilty for long. And then, god help whomever he decided _was _responsible.

"Go talk to him," he advised thoughtfully. "Talk to both of them. If your… if Wayne is actually here, you should take advantage of this opportunity."

It sounded like madness, or rather it would have, coming from anyone else. But this was _Sayid_, and so Kate found herself nodding in agreement. He was right. Even if it wasn't Wayne, even if it was all in her head, this was the only way to be free of it… well, as free as she would ever be.

"Are you going to be okay?" she asked.

He sat for a moment, thinking. Finally, he said, "I'll see you at the beach when you've finished your shift."

It was sweetly phrased, but it was still a request to be left alone. Her tongue moved behind her teeth, about to say, "Thank you." But then their eyes met again, and she saw him silently thanking _her_, for whatever reason. Probably for distracting him as he had distracted her, if only for a moment. Impulsively, she hugged him tight, pulling his head into her neck, before standing up and taking off back to the hatch. It was crazy, what she was about to do. But weirdly, it made sense.


End file.
